Maszman Speaks!

If you’ve ever won­dered about the dan­gers of hydraulic frac­tur­ing or “frack­ing”, con­sider what hap­pened in Wyoming. There’s no free lunch, and the price may be higher than you can imagine.

It’s hard to believe things in the Gulf could get worse but now a Mariner Energy oil rig in the gulf has exploded and is on fire. Some reports have said the rig was “not pro­duc­ing” but that seems odd con­sid­er­ing there were thir­teen work­ers on it.

Link here.

I sup­pose I should win an award for irony, but the same year I buy a motor­cy­cle and start rid­ing again is the same year as the death toll from motor­cy­cles in the area dou­bles. It’s a com­bi­na­tion of alco­hol, inex­pe­ri­ence and plain care­less­ness on part of rid­ers and auto­mo­bile dri­vers. While you can’t make dri­vers more aware of the road, not with their sound sys­tems, cell phones and DVD play­ers, you can eas­ily not drink and ride and take a motor­cy­cle rid­ing course, regard­less of your level of expe­ri­ence. My youngest wanted to get her motor­cy­cle license and we insisted she take the begin­ning rid­ers course at MCC (men­tioned in the linked arti­cle). I wish I had done that myself, although the course wasn’t as pop­u­lar back when I first started rid­ing. I’m sure a lot of peo­ple feel the same way.

Neu­rol­o­gist Oliver Sacks is famous for books like Awak­en­ings and The Man Who Mis­took His Wife for a Hat that describe his patients deal­ing with var­i­ous neural dis­or­ders and injuries. But his lat­est, The Mind’s Eye, takes a slightly dif­fer­ent path because one of the sub­jects is Sacks him­self, deal­ing with can­cer of the eye.

NASA is post­ing his­tor­i­cal pho­tos on Flickr with no restric­tions. If you’re a space his­tory buff, this is a great place to check out images you may not have seen before.